


Funerals With Cake

by thesnadger



Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty
Genre: Fluff, M/M, but for the most part it's fluff, no one should ever listen to Rick when he says "stick your hand in there" that's all I'm saying, one moment of body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-23 06:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8316811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesnadger/pseuds/thesnadger
Summary: You ever think about marriage? Stan had asked. Of course not. Rick knows from experience the whole concept is bad news, mutually assured misery sealed with champagne and bad DJ music. He'd thought Stan felt the same way. So why does he keep bringing it up?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Stanchez Micro-Bang!
> 
> I never really thought these two would be likely to get married, but Stanchez-Sloppy-Seconds's posts about it got me thinking how something like that might actually come about.
> 
> ADORABLE art by plumwoods: http://plumwoods.tumblr.com/post/151943171814/my-piece-for-the-stanchez-bang-ahh-i-was-so

“It'd make Mabel happy, that's for sure.” Stan said, leaning against the split log that made up the horizontal pole of the fence.

Rick glanced at him, unibrow half raised, unimpressed. “It'd make Mabel happy if we ate sprinkles for breakfast every day. Th-that doesn't make it a good idea.”

The two of them had been lounging outside the Mystery Shack, soaking up the quiet afternoon air. Soos was inside, finishing up the last tours of the day. Ford was somewhere in the basement, tinkering away with that Chiu kid and her buff friend. Summer was at Wendy's and Morty had gone on some kind of monster hunt or something with the twins. The two of them finally had some space.

He and Stan had been leaning on the fence on the far side of the Shack's parking lot, staring out at the woods and tossing stale bread to the stomach-faced ducks that gathered there. It was always funny watching them try to peck it up off the ground with beaks that made no biological sense for their bodies.

Rick used to complain about how isolated this backwoods town was—loudly and frequently. But he had to admit, he was starting to see the appeal. Peace and quiet, no neighbors to bother you. Kinda nice. Until Stan had to go and break the peace by asking a stupid question like that.

 _You ever think about marriage?_ He'd asked.

“Yeah.” Stan chuckled. “You're probably right... Don't know why it popped into my head.”

“Well, pop it right back out of your head.” Rick pulled a bread husk from the plastic bag and hurled it a couple yards deep into the woods, irritated. “Marriage is a sham. A w-w-way for people who can't handle being alone with their thoughts to make sure there's always someone around them.”

“All right, all right, yeesh.” Stan rolled his eyes. “I get it. Lay it on a little thicker, why don't you?”

“I'll lay it on thick as I want, wh-whatever it takes to keep from having this conversation again.” Rick muttered, removing a flask from his coat and taking a long pull. When he finished, Stan reached over wordlessly and took the flask from his hands, tucking it into his own pocket and out of Rick's reach.

Rick frowned, irritated that he was being cut off after one drink, but didn't protest. Instead he reached into the cooler, pulled out one of those nasty peach sodas Stan was always drinking, and let the matter lie.

* * *

“It's not as if we live together.” Stan said, hefting the unconscious gromflomite over his shoulder. “I mean, me ’n’ Ford are always off on the Stan O'War, and you're runnin' around in space with your grandkids half the time.”

“Exactly. So w-what's the point of entering into some dumb, obsolete social contract that doesn't even apply to us?” Rick stalked down the metal corridor ahead of him, not looking up from the holoblob in his hands. “I-it's not like we're even fuckin' one another exclusively, which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be the main point of the whole marriage thing.”

Rick sent a glance back at Stan, who was frowning. He shrugged and turned his attention back to the holographic blueprints. They were about three levels deep into the biggest compound on Fleebox II. If they kept moving forward at this pace, they'd get to the vault in no time. Meanwhile, the room with the DNA fabricator was just a few doors down.

“Listen,” Rick continued, “maybe y-y-you've got some pie-in-the-sky idea of what marriage is like 'cause you've never been through it--”

“Hey, I had a wife--”

“For nine hours. I'm talking about real marriage. Waking up next to someone y-you can't fucking stand marriage. M-m-matching slippers and joint fucking bank accounts marriage. Going to the fucking candle store to buy a shitty housewarming gift for her friend th-that thinks you're a piece of shit who ruined her life marriage! It's a three-ring circus of nightmares with only one clown, and it's y-you, the clown is you, Stan, for being dumb enough to say yes when she asked you.”

“You're losing me, what was that about candles?”

“My point is, i-is that nothing good ever came out of signing your name on a government document.” Rick took a deep breath, trying to get control of his stammer. “M-m-marriage doesn't work because it's not supposed to work. It's supposed to keep you both distracted by petty shit with one another until death. That's it.”

Stan grunted, and Rick pretended he couldn't tell whether it was with the effort of lifting or because he didn't like what he was hearing.

Rick kept on walking. “Name one married couple you know that didn't end in mutual hatred, divorce or homicide.”

“Dipper and Mabel's parents are doing fine.”

“They don't count. They're just a couple of pairs of arms,” Rick sneered. The holoblob lit up in his hands--there it was, the fabricator room was just ahead.

“What the hell does that mean?” Stan asked.

“Never mind. M-my point is, give 'em time, they'll find a way to fuck it up.” Rick put the holoblob away and helped Stan lower the gromflomite guard to the floor.

“Okay,” Stan said, pressing the guard's tarsal claw against the handprint scanner. “What about Melody and Soos?”

Rick was silent. He punched a code into the security panel and grabbed the guard's ankles, while Stan slipped his hands under the top set of arms and the two of them carried the guard inside, throwing him into the DNA fabricator. Rick quietly started up the machine while Stan kept watch, and a few minutes later it was running at full power.

“Stick your hand in here.” Rick said, pointing at the machine's input orifice.

Stan glanced at the damp, fleshy workings of the fabricator skeptically, and reluctantly stuck his non-dominant hand inside.

“That feels weird, what's it doing to—YAH!” Stan let out a yelp of surprise, removing his arm only to find that his wrist now tapered into an olive-green gromflomite claw. “What did you do to me?!”

“Relax, i-it'll wear off in a couple of hours,” Rick smirked. “In the meantime, that thing'll get us past any other handprint scanners we come across.”

Stan glared at him, flexing the strange new appendage. “I really need to learn to ask more questions when you say things like 'stick your hand in there.' ”

“You _suuuure_ do. Pretty glad y-you don't have some government issued piece of paper tellin' ya you have to forgive me now, aren't you?” He grinned and slammed the door to the fabrication chamber, locking the guard inside. “Now c'mon, let's steal some expensive space junk.”

* * *

“What's got you talking about marriage all...all of a sudden anyway?” Rick grumbled, shifting against Stan and pulling the blankets tighter around them both. “I thought y-you of all people wouldn't buy into that crap.”

It had been months since the heist on Fleebox II. He'd thought the conversation had been settled there. But here they were, curled up in the back of his spaceship while the autopilot sent it on a path back towards earth, and the old sap had brought it up again.

“Yeah...that's true,” Stan said, wrapping a meaty arm around Rick and pulling him a little closer. “I guess... Ah, you'll think it's stupid.”

“Probably.” Rick agreed. “Most things that relate to that subject are.”

Stan sighed, turning his head towards the convex glass window. Rick could see the patterns of the stars, the swirls and twists of galaxies reflecting on the lens of his glasses. “Well...they passed some laws recently making it legal. Ah, y'know. For two guys. I mean, two girls too, but...”

“I get the idea,” Rick grumbled. “We'll see how long that lasts with the reactionary bullshit that i-i-inevitably follows. Same shit, different galaxy. _Tell_ me that's not the only reason.”

“No, no. I mean, when I heard about it I guess I was happy for the other people who might wanna get hitched, but I didn't think it was a thing for us.”

“Good.” Rick said.

“But I guess a bunch of kids are getting married now 'cause of it, and since they're doing everything on the internet these days some of them are putting videos and stuff of it up there. Mabel sends 'em to me now and then. You know how she is.”

“Ugh.” Rick affirmed. He could only imagine the kind of schmaltz that would strike that little pixie's fancy. Elaborate proposal rituals with people singing and dancing. Self-congratulatory ceremonies full of dead flowers and old lace and rented carriages with horses and that kind of junk.

“Anyway, there was this one that she sent... It was an elderly couple. Older than us, even. One of 'em was a veteran and was real sick because of something that got lodged in his lung way back in the day. He probably didn't have many years ahead of him, and who knows how many the other one had? But they still wanted to go through with it. Even if the only milestone they had to look forward to was one of 'em watching the other bite the dust.”

Rick was quiet at that. He tried to make a smartass reply, but nothing came to mind right away and it didn't seem worth the effort to think one up.

“And I just thought—those two probably never thought marriage was for them, y'know? I mean, people didn't even used to talk about it like it was a possibility until a few years ago. But when they walked out of that courthouse they just looked... I dunno. Happy. And I thought, hell, that wouldn't be so bad, would it?”

There was silence in the spacecraft until Stan broke it with a quiet, “you're right. It's stupid.”

Rick was silent for a long, long while. Then he sat up.

“Fuck it,” he said, reaching into the front seat and rooting around.

“What is it now?” Stan asked.

Rick found what he'd been looking for—he pulled the brick sized interstellar cell phone out from under the seat and tossed it into the back. Stan caught and fumbled with it.

“Call your stupid family,” he said. “We're getting married.”

“What?!” Stan sputtered. “Wait, wait... Do you mean later or like, now?”

“What, y-you got someplace to be?” Rick settled into the front seat. “I gotta make a couple detours on the way, there's some stuff and a person I wanna pick up first.”

Rick locked his head straight forward. No way in hell was he gonna turn around and actually face Stan while he was talking about this, but he kept him in his peripheral vision. He strained to see his expression, what his reaction was.

Stan glanced down at the phone in his hands for a while. Then he tossed it aside, grinning.

“Hell no,” he said. “Not until you get down on one knee.”


End file.
